


There's Sun on My Skin Now

by Razzledazzy



Series: It's Best Not to Stare at the Sun [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Gen, Post-Briarwoods Arc, Sibling Bonding, Whitestone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 22:50:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13305012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzledazzy/pseuds/Razzledazzy
Summary: Percy and Cassandra have a few things to talk about now that the Briarwoods are dead.





	There's Sun on My Skin Now

“Percival,” Cassandra reached out to lay an hand on his shoulder. The contact was barely felt beneath his coat but nothing warded off the chill it caused his soul.

“I’d appreciate it if you would call me Percy,” he intoned softly, eyes catching on a portrait of Vesper at the other end of the hall. It hadn’t been properly cared for and the lacquer covering the oil had aged badly in five years, covering her face in a crackling web of glassy yellow. It could be restored but it would never be the same.

Turning to his sister, Percy covered her hand with one of his own. Innumerable silver scars mottled the skin of fingers exposed underneath his gloves. Cassie’s hands held rough calluses, but no scars. Another mark of the different paths their lives had taken.

“Cassandra, I’m not… I’m not your Percival. I can’t go back to being the little brother you remember. The one that would stay cooped up in the library for days on end. I can’t stay here.” Muscles in his abdomen twinged at the admission. “Truth be told, I came back to eliminate the Briarwoods at all cost. It was a mission I did not expect to have a high chance of surviving, much to the horror of my husband- had he known.”

Cassandra started as if to interrupt, but Percy squeezed her hand in warning.

“Let me finish. I’m not Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III. He never would have survived the first round of Dr. Ripley’s torture. But I did,” Percy longed to pull a contraption from his belt and busy his hands tinkering on it. If only to stop them from shaking for a moment.

“Percy,” Cassandra said softly, wiping away a drop of moisture from the corner of his eye before he was even aware of it gathering there. “No one expects you to be able to pick back up your old life in Whitestone like nothing happened.”

“Well, that’s good then,” Percy huffed slightly, as unsure of how to receive casual affection from his sister as she was to give it to him.

“Would you tell me what happened? After you escaped?” Cass said. She gestured into a room, their mother’s study. It was one of the rooms that the Briarwoods had no cause to meddle with. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Half finished portraits rolled up and stored next to the desk. Chips of paint and drips of color scattered across the wooden floor like a map of his mother's life.

The thought of entering the room made his chest seize. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good, I’d love to hear the story of how you became Percy of Vox Machina,” Cass teased him lightly, but her voice cracked over the words.

She walked forward with a nonchalance bred from familiarity, leaving Percy to pick his way across the dusty floor. There were clean spots in the dust where someone- probably Cass had disturbed it over the years.

He sat on the love seat adjacent to the desk. It cracked but the wooden frame held strong against his weight. The creaking of the wood filled the silence of a conversation he didn't know how to have.

Well, he could always try things Vax's way.

“It all started when I sold my soul to a demon,” Percy joked, but Cassandra only nodded solemnly.

“I saw a bit of that,” she whispered.

He rubbed at his shoulder as he tried to recover from his joke falling flat. He’d begun to rely too much on his humor as a coping mechanism, and Vax was always ready with another joke to take both of their minds off of their flaws.

He sighed and looked at his hands. "Cassandra, you have to know that I was sure all of you were dead. If I had known you survived I would have come back for you. I would have done something, anything. To try and save you."

Cassandra pushed off from the dusty corner of their mother's desk, sitting down next to him and turning his head to face her. "I'm glad you didn't know. If you had died trying to save, I would have been lost. They tried to convince me you had, every so often, but Lady Briarwood had a tell when she lied. There was nothing you could have done. Tell me that you know this."

Percy nodded, unable to speak.

"Now, tell me about your new family?" Her request was quiet, and Percy dismayed himself a the thought of how painful those words must be. To acknowledge that he had found a family and left her behind.

“They all saved me. Each one of them. Without them there would be no way for me to be talking with you now, here in this place. I’d been carried away by the river, and I was so, so cold. A lot of that was desperation, acting on instinct for a long time. Then I realized I had to try and get revenge, so I changed back-”

Cassandra’s grip tightened painfully. She hadn’t been allowed to shift for years, and Percy knew all too well how that could build up inside, tearing at your bones until you were desperate to let it go. To do horrible things. When she was ready to try, Percy would be there for her. Even if he couldn’t stay in Whitestone and be the brother she had known, he would return here for her.

“Revenge didn't go as planned. They dug me out of a prison cell, of all things.”

“How’d you end up in prison?”

Percy fiddled with his belt, fingers stroking the bullets to a gun he no longer had, made by a demon that would never have control over him again. “It’s a long story.”

She smiled at him, “We’ve got time.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last drabble/oneshot that I had written out for this series. Don't know if there's going to be anything else seeing as how I'm so behind on CR that I'm never getting out of this hole.
> 
> But I AM watching the new campaign so maybe look forward to some stuff for that.
> 
> Check out my profile for links you can find me at.


End file.
